


(won't you please) be my little baby

by stilesinwonderland (itsabravenewworld)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Derek is a baby, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsabravenewworld/pseuds/stilesinwonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty minutes after his dad drives off to the store to buy milk, Stiles answers the door wearing wooly Batman pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt, only to find a baby seated on his front porch. </p><p>“Oh no.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	(won't you please) be my little baby

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of a piece of fanart my good friend Lea (mcpuppy) did on tumblr of a baby Derek, and after sending her nearly 4 paragraphs of descriptions of how cute Derek would be as a kid, I decided that it had to be written. 
> 
> [the art can be found here!](http://newtyears.tumblr.com/post/91275712196/all-snuggled-up-with-his-stuffed-animals)
> 
> And wow guys, I mean wow. I wrote this in 3 days (not counting the first 2,000 a couple weeks before when I forgot about it) in a haze of goldfish, cheez-its and other unhealthy snacks, and somehow I ended up with 14,000 words, no snacks left, and something brand new for you guys to read! 
> 
> PS. Title is from the Song "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes
> 
> EDIT: This now has fanart that can be found [here!](http://loserchildhotpants.tumblr.com/post/106489369710/my-friend-nicole-colekiss-and-i-were-drawing)

Twenty minutes after his dad drives off to the store to buy milk, Stiles answers the door wearing wooly Batman pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt, only to find a baby seated on his front porch.

“Oh no.”

The kid is staring up at him and making these weird gurgling angry noises that Stiles has never heard coming from such a small child. Stiles checks for any cars around but the street is empty save for the baby, rocking himself in the seat. He can’t be more than a year old, with dark hair and thick eyebrows that are slanting down and a tiny little mouth that’s starting to tremble.

“Hey little dude, you’re okay,” he says on instinct. Stiles kneels down to inspect the child where he’s set in a car seat, completely naked, and notices the pile of clothes sitting behind it, a pair of jeans and an olive green t-shirt, with a note taped to them. Stiles flips open the note to read it.

_We think this belongs to you_

Stiles snorts out a laugh, and it must be a mechanism just to not freak out about the infant on his property. “Belongs to…” He huffs out in frustration when the baby reaches a hand out with a constipated face and a hiccuped breath.

“What’s up little dude,” Stiles asks, lets him grip onto his thumb, and the baby levels him with a glare. An actual, honest to god glare. With a wrinkled forehead and raised eyebrows. Which snaps him to attention (and it figures that it’s the baby _glaring_ at him that would tell him what’s going on) because he all of a sudden _recognizes_ who the baby is.

“Derek?”

Baby-Derek burps and then looks baffled, somehow still managing to look upset while he does it. And when he sneezes, he sprouts sideburns that reach around his face and little fangs stick out behind his top lip. His eyes glow bright red and he’s looking at Stiles like he holds the answers to the universe. And then he starts crying. Stiles slumps to sit on the concrete and puts his face in his hand.

 

“Fuck.”

 

-

“Mister Stilinski,” Deaton greets over the phone, tone laced with caution and suspicion that Stiles is used to by now. Stiles hefts a temporarily dressed (covered with a blanket from Stiles’s couch) Derek up onto his hip and Derek wails again, right next to Stiles’s ear. “Stiles. Is that a baby I hear?”

“Sort of.” Stiles mutters nonsense sentences into Derek’s ear to quiet him before continuing, and Derek snuffles into the fabric of his shirt sullenly. “We’ve sort of stumbled on an issue here.”

“I can hear that. It’s not yours is it?”

“What? _No,”_ Stiles snaps, and Derek looks up at his outburst in shock. “Sorry Derek, didn’t mean to scare you.”

_“Derek?”_

Derek, even as a baby, is pretty perceptive, and when he hears Deaton say his name, he makes grabby hands for the phone with an expectant face. Stiles puts it on speaker and carefully sits them on couch with Derek on his leg; Derek looks at the phone. He says, “Dea” seriously and slaps at the screen, hard.

“Hi Derek,” Deaton answers. His voice softens, and even Deaton seems impervious to baby-talking. “Exactly how old is he, Stiles?”

Stiles pulls the phone back and pulls it out of Derek’s reach because he doesn’t have the money to pay for a new phone when Derek claws the screen or breaks it with his fists. When he takes it, Derek promptly bursts out crying. “I don’t really know, no more than one,” Stiles mumbles distractedly and places the remote control to his living room TV in Derek’s little hands, and Derek suddenly is more occupied with trying to turn the channels than with Deaton. Stiles sighs in relief.

He thinks he can hear Deaton chuckling over the line. “And how exactly did Derek come to be a baby?”

Stiles growls in the back of his throat. Derek tenses up but doesn’t look up from the remote that has scratches all over it now. “You think if I knew I’d be calling you?”

“You usually always know what is happening before coming to me,” Deaton says matter of factly. And it’s true, which is the most infuriating concept for Stiles to grasp. He doesn’t know how to reverse this, and he definitely doesn’t know how to take care of a child on his own-- particularly not a _werewolf_ child.  There are too many obstacles that Stiles needs to jump over to deal with this.

“Someone left him on my front porch after my dad left.” Stiles thinks of his dad, probably on his way home and feels a surge of panic. His dad is finally in the light with the whole werewolves things, but Stiles isn’t so sure how much more his dad can take in regards to supernatural exposure.

“And my dad is coming home right _now_ ; he really won’t appreciate there being a child here. I would take him to you but I don’t even think I have a car seat anymore and I’d be pulled over by every cop imaginable on the way there.” He also can’t go anywhere without Derek so that means he’s without diapers and formula without either outside assistance or breaking the law.

Deaton hums. “True. And I’m currently out of town anyways. You redirected to my cell phone.”

“What do I do then,” Stiles asks.

“I would call Scott. See if he can offer any help. I’ll be back in a couple of days.” Stiles huffs, frustrated. “Until then, I will look and see what I can find on it.” Deaton hangs up and leaves Stiles with no answers and a fidgeting baby.

His dad comes home to Stiles trying to wrap a rag around Derek as a makeshift diaper and frantically talking to Scott’s voicemail. Derek keeps pawing the rag off, fully intent on staying naked. After the third try, Stiles holds Derek down by the stomach and dials Scott’s number again.

“Seriously man, if you could just answer your phone that’d be--” Stiles freezes as the front door opens and his father pauses in the doorway, milk in hand. Stiles hangs up the phone.

“Uh,” his dad says.

“Uh,” Stiles echos.

“Stiles.” He sets the milk down on the counter with a thump. “Why is there a baby in here.”

Stiles looks back and forth between the two. “Now before you assume that I’ve knocked someone up or grown a baby up in a lab or something, I can explain. It’s a werewolf thing. Or a supernatural thing.” He waves his hand. “This, is Derek _.”_ Derek babbles an affirmative noise and giggles.

“Derek?” His dad repeats back, staring at him like he’s officially lost it. Stiles motions with his hands for his dad to step closer.  He does and, inspects the baby laying on their counter. Derek doesn’t seem to be too scared of him and gives him a smile that makes Stiles feel sad for a moment.

“Hale,” Stiles tells him, just in case, as a reinforcement.

Derek grabs onto his dad’s finger and his dad scoops him up. Derek burrows his face into the sheriff’s neck, and the sheriff gives Stiles not quite a smile but something close to one. “I know which Derek, you don’t know that many people,” his dad jokes, holds onto Derek’s head with a palm, and Stiles sighs in relief. “How exactly did this happen?”

“Figuring it out, that’s kind of a work in progress. But knowing him, it’s probably his fault.” They smile at each other and Derek growls lowly in the sheriff’s arms as if he were responding.

-

It turns out that they _do_ have a functioning car seat from when Stiles was a kid, stuck in the back of their garage. Stiles doubts the safety of the old seat but they both admit that it’s the best they have due to the current situation and they are in serious need of diapers and food. The seat is covered in dust and probably has spiders, and Stiles’s dad cleans it off while Stiles makes more calls to members of the pack to meet him at his house as soon as they can.

His dad also manages to dig up an old outfit of Stiles’s-- a keepsake that he’d been reserving for when Stiles had kids. His dad dresses Derek in a pair of green and blue footie pajamas with a teddy bear in the middle of the chest. Stiles takes a few pictures to blackmail Derek with when he’s back to normal but even he can admit that Derek looks cute that way.

They decide to take the Jeep because when Derek sees the cage separating the front and back seats in the cruiser, he bursts out into frantic tears, sobbing into Stiles’s neck. Stiles comes out of the brawl with a few scratches on his face and a frothing werewolf-baby Derek clutching onto Stiles’s ears, scrambling to get away from the car and tears running down his face.

Derek sits easier in the back of the Jeep, but whenever Stiles sneaks a glance back at him in his rearview mirror, Derek’s face looks wide-eyed and fearful. He points it out to his father, but Stiles’s dad tells him that a lot of babies don’t like car seats at his age, because any kind of lapse of control scares them. “Great. That’s something I can deal with. Derek being a control freak like usual,” Stiles says, his smile tight.

Derek clutches onto him just to get out of the car as quick as he can, and Stiles places fingers over the back of Derek’s hair, rubbing through it to calm him. Derek blinks bright, shiny green eyes at him and Stiles gives him a small smile. He pauses when he notes that his father has stopped walking and is looking at them with a fond expression. “What?”

John shakes his head, rubs a hand over the back of his neck, but the smile is still there. “Nothing. Let’s just get what we need and get home to get this taken care of.”

Stiles can only convince his dad to spend the money on one toy for Derek to play with and he decides to get him a little stuffed wolf. Derek doesn’t really understand the reason for Stiles’s laughter, but he looks pleased enough to be given something to hold as Stiles carries him through the store aisles.

Stiles goes back to following his dad when he shops because the locals keep inquiring about the kid in his arms, and well, nearly everyone there knows him. Everybody is a local in Beacon Hills.

He gets stopped by his elderly neighbor and her husband halfway through the produce aisle. “Stiles!”

“Mrs. Hallaway!” Stiles exclaims, and looks up to the sky with a curse before turning around to face her.

“It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen you out and around town,” Mrs. Hallaway comments.

Stiles gives Derek a little heft up in his arms, says “Yeah, I’ve been a little busy lately.”

“I can see that,” she says, and the wrinkles in her face sink farther when she gives Derek a smile. “And who is this?”  Derek shirks away from her hand and lets a whimper out.

“It’s okay, little dude,” Stiles tells Derek, and Derek looks out from Stiles’s shoulder. “This is Miguel. He’s the kid of a friend that came for a visit.”

Derek has already warmed up to Mrs. Hallaway and is laughing while she blows raspberries in his direction. “You know,” she says with her scratchy, shaky voice, “he reminds me of someone…” Stiles’s breath threatens to stop in his throat. “He looks like that Hale boy! Back when he was a baby! I remember, he was always the cutest thing. Look Hal!” She tries calling her husband over, and Stiles struggles with an explanation.

His dad thankfully shows up behind him right at that moment, greeting Mrs. Halloway and her husband with a smile that only Stiles can tell is forced. “This is Laura Hale’s son,” he says after, and the mood sombers immediately. The way Derek’s face brightens at Laura’s name makes Stiles feel sick.

“Miguel,” Stiles helpfully supplies with a tilt of his head, ignoring the not-so-subtle judgemental look he gets from his father in response.

“Right,” Mrs. Hallaway says, clapping her shaking hands together. “Well hopefully we’ll see you soon, Stiles. And Miguel too.”

“Of course,” Stiles replies, and his dad ushers him away from the old woman, muttering to her husband under her breath. Stiles knows it’s about Laura and he attempts to cover Derek’s ears, just in case.

Together, Stiles and his dad get a good amount of weird and judgemental looks, and he sticks his tongue out at a giggling group of teenagers that look like they’re dressed for a rave, with matching silver charm bracelets and bleeding attitudes.

Ugh, Stiles hates kids like that. His mood sours further when Derek, oblivious to the creepy air they’re emanating, only gives the group a gummy smile and shakes the wolf toy in their direction, dropping it. Stiles struggles with trying to settle Derek in his arm while bending over the pick the toy up, and he shoots up when someone grabs it off the floor before he can even coordinate his movements.

It’s one of the teenagers; she looks like the youngest out of all of them. She hands the tiny wolf over, gives Stiles a tight smile. She’s around his age, with silvery frost-colored hair and a delicate nose ring. Stiles thinks for a second that she looks nearly fake and extremely beautiful.

He gives her a hesitant smile back and rejoins his dad who is grunting at two different changing tables and something about it having to be relatively claw proof, and how is this his life.

They get a couple bags of diapers and two new outfits for Derek to wear, along with formula, bottles, and baby wipes. They decide that a play-gate is also necessary. By the time they’re rung up and Stiles spots the price, he gapes while his dad very hesitantly hands over his credit card with a grimace.

At the car, he lifts Derek up to eye-level and whispers, “You can bet you’ll be paying back for this bucko.” Derek doesn’t look like he comprehends that he’s in trouble, so Stiles puts him back in the car seat and straps him in with a grunt. Derek whimpers the whole way back to the house but Stiles manages to ignore him.

“Put some warm water in a bowl to warm up the formula,” his dad orders, carrying bags and motioning to the one with the formula in it. Erica is waiting on the couch for them, along with Isaac, Boyd, Lydia and Scott.

“I don’t know how you guys got in here and I don’t care,” Stiles says as a greeting.

“How kind of you,” Erica says, and none of them have seen Derek because his dad has him in the kitchen and is diaper-ing him. They probably assume that Derek is outside, lurking in the corners of the house and listening in like he usually does. So Stiles still has the element of surprise.  “What exactly is the emergency?”

“I’m supposed to be going on a date,” Isaac comments from the couch with his feet on his coffee table. Stiles is irritated by this, like he usually is whenever Isaac talks, escalated by the fact that he knows Stiles hates feet on his coffee table. Stiles finally starts to understand a little bit why Derek was always pissed off at his pack. He also wonders if, by association, he is officially in charge of pack business now. It's kind of a horrifying thought.

“Trust me, it’s worth emergency status,” Stiles says, and goes back to the kitchen to heft Derek up out of his dad’s arms where he’s starting dinner for himself.

“Well, what exactly is it?” Lydia asks, and Stiles walks back into the room. She sits up the couch and lowers her phone, eyebrow ticking up. “What the hell is that.”

Stiles looks at her. “It’s a baby.”

“No shit.” Erica sniffs at the air. “But it smells different. Familiar.”

“Is that _Derek?”_ Scott realizes, and Stiles shrugs, motioning in a _surprise_ kind of way.

He feels a rumbling in his chest and apparently Derek is growling lowly in Scott’s direction. Scott has this expression on his face like he wants to touch Derek, and Derek makes an animalistic noise, that if he were older would have sounded more serious, but at the time just sounds like a pissed off cat. “Yeah. That’s Derek. It smells like him.” Scott concludes.

“And he hates you even as a baby,” Lydia adds with disinterest.  

“Uh,” Stiles says as Derek’s chubby hands grasp at his mouth, tugging his bottom lip down, and he points with his other hand at Boyd where he’s leaning against the wall. “That’s Boyd, Derek. You know Boyd, right? He’s your beta. But when you’re older, and not a baby.”

Derek actually lets Boyd get close enough to touch him without too much of a fuss, much to Stiles’s surprise. Boyd, in all his size still looks like he’s stepping on eggshells when he reaches a hand out towards Derek and tickles at Derek’s neck. He keeps his hand there, testing the waters, and Derek tries to get hold of him with his tiny hands. Derek’s nose crinkles as he _sniffs_ him and he buries his face into Boyd’s palm with a little sigh. When he opens his eyes enough, Stiles can catch the faint flicker of his red alpha-eyes before they fade back to green.

“Well this is good,” Erica says with a roll of her eyes. “Our alpha is a baby.”

“What exactly are we supposed to do about this?”

“For right now, we have to take care of him until Deaton can figure something out or we can do something about it,” Stiles explains. “Which is why I called you guys.”

Lydia raises a palm and Stiles immediately shuts up. So much for being in charge. “Hold on. I’m not helping you _babysit_ Derek.”

“You seem to have taken him up, so there’s no need for _my_ help,” Isaac chirps brightly and gives him a sarcastic smile.

“I’m not helping!” Scott says immediately.

“Derek wouldn’t let you touch him anyways, idiot,” Lydia tells him, which shuts him up.

“He needs _pack,_ guys," Stiles says.

Boyd hesitantly approaches him, holds his arms open for Stiles to set Derek into. With aching arms (he must have been carrying him for so long that he hadn’t noticed) Stiles gives him a grateful smile and hands Derek over. Boyd looks like he knows what he’s doing, hefting Derek over his shoulder and patting at his back gently.  

“I have cousins back home in Seattle,” Boyd tells him, and Stiles notices the lack of Derek snuffling but he’s still sniffing at Boyd’s neck and wherever he can reach.

“Thank you Boyd. Taking one for the team.” Stiles sits down for the first time in a couple hours and he already feel exhausted. “I don’t have the means to take care of all of this on my own, guys. I don’t have the money or the energy and I’m pretty sure my dad can only help so much.”

“That’s where I come in,” Lydia calls. “I can buy whatever you need.” She accentuates this statement with a hair flip and a cocky smile, and Stiles feels a sudden flare of affection for her. It’s been a long time since he’s been sexually attracted to her because of so much lost hope over time, but he still loves her (almost completely in a platonic way) and always will.

It seems that he has a thing for sarcastic people that are out of his league, because Derek. Derek. Derek and Lydia have a lot in common, including being incredibly attractive and having wit sharper than a knife. But they also possess the ability to make Stiles a bumbling mess in three seconds if they choose to do so. He’s not even ready to think about that while Derek is sitting there and has decreased by 24 years, but he feels a desperation to get Derek back that’s overwhelming and that he can’t explain.  

He can vaguely hear Boyd struggling with a yowling Derek and sees that he’s wolfed out in Boyd’s grip and is straining towards Stiles, face scrunched up. He jumps back up immediately and starts talking in a low voice, saying “hey, hey Derek, what’s going on?” Derek looks less stressed now that Stiles is closer but is still making rumbling noises and his bushy eyebrows are bent down.

When Derek is more settled in Boyd’s arms, Stiles feels the collective gaze of the pack and turns back to them. “What?”

“It’s just weird. Derek actually seems like he _likes_ you,” Scott says, face twisted.

“He usually seems like he likes me,” Stiles bristles and returns to the couch once is seems like Derek isn’t about to rip Boyd’s arm up. “And he’s a baby. He probably loves everyone.”

“He doesn’t like me,” Scott points out.

“Not many people do, friend,” Stiles chuckles.

“Hey!”

“It’s true,” Erica says offhandedly, still looking at Derek like she’s not sure what to do about Derek being like this. It should probably more awkward for her than most of them; she’d had a crush on Derek for the first two years as a beta and even made out with him. Even Stiles feels like he’s robbing the cradle for whatever his thing was before with Derek.

His dad enters a few moments later and in that time Scott has Stiles in a headlock, Erica and Lydia are talking heatedly, and Boyd is rocking an upset Derek in his arms. He hands the now-heated bottle to Boyd and pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Derek greedily starts drinking the food and finishes in less than a minute. “How are you kids going to take care of a baby?”

Stiles shoves Scott off of him. “Well that’s easy,” he says, rubbing at his shirt with a grin. “It’s only Derek. All you need to do is be nice to him and hope that he won’t cry.”

“I would pay money to see Derek crying,” Erica mumbles, and Stiles gives her a dirty look.

“You will not purposely be making the baby cry. That’s the highest on the list of assholish things you could do.”

His dad huffs out a breath. “Well I think he needs a change-check soon. So that might happen without Erica’s help.”

Lydia raises her credit card so quickly that her arm looks like a blur. “I’m going to go shopping now.” With that, stands up,  tows Erica and Isaac along, and leaves the house. Stiles gives Scott a horrified look.

“No way man,” Scott says. “He doesn’t like me, remember?”

“Boyd?” Stiles asks desperately, spinning around, and even Boyd is shaking his head.

“No way, Stiles. That’s like changing my _dad’s_ diaper. I can’t handle that. It’s too weird.”

Stiles can’t exactly defend against doing it because he’s in for a world of hurt if he admits that he thinks of Derek sexually. He groans, takes Derek out of Boyd’s grip and dismisses Boyd with a wave of his hand. He gratefully takes the out and leaves the house, and Stiles calls “That didn’t mean to _leave_ ,” but it falls on deaf ears. “I’m not paid enough for this,” he huffs. Derek makes an unhappy noise and he hushes him, irritated. “Don’t you think I’m not paid enough to do this? You probably feel that way all of the time, don’t you? Remind me to buy you a card when we get you back to normal.”

 

-

 

His dad instructs him on what to do to change a diaper and leaves him to it. Derek seems content to lay there while Stiles takes his clothes off, and Stiles thanks every deity he knows that as a baby Derek is a lot less stubborn than he is an an adult.

He finally takes the diaper out of its packaging and lets out a groan. “This is totally going to kill my boner for you from now on, isn’t it?” Derek burps, looking confused at the source of the noise and he starts giggling. Stiles smiles down at him and thinks, no, because there’s apparently a heart-boner to worry about too.

 

-

 

It takes Stiles an embarrassingly short amount of time to forget that the baby in his hands is a smaller version of Derek Hale. Because well, there are a lot more smiles directed at him that melt his heart and negating the times he needs to be changed and is hungry, he's so much less sad looking than Derek in the future. And he never before would have pegged Derek Hale as sad, but since he could never actually pin down Derek's exact expression and seeing a lack of it firsthand, he realizes with a jolt that _that's_ what it is. It’s kind of heartbreaking, he thinks, bouncing a babbling Derek on his knee, and he strokes the thin wispy hair on his head while watching the TV.

Derek can seem to sense that he’s upset and fists tiny little fingers around Stiles’s thumb, making a confused whining noise. It’s close enough to Derek’s grown-up eyebrow scrunch that Stiles’s heart sinks.  “Nah, nah little man. Uncle Stiles is alright,” he says anyways, noting the slight cracking in his voice. “We’re all peachy.” But Derek can probably tell that Stiles is lying to him (the heartbeat tick sense must be more instinctual than he'd thought) because he won't settle down, eventually turning into his alpha form and biting into Stiles's shoulder with little fangs.

Lydia returns halfway through a Spongebob rerun. It turns out she is willing to spend as much money as she needs, because she comes back with nothing short of an entire store. She has two more packs of diapers, a carrier that straps around his chest and stroller for Stiles to use, some baby-grade body wash and shampoo, a collection of baby towels with animal heads, a proper changing table, a crib (which she forces Isaac to assemble much to Stiles’s delight), and a large assortment of jarred foods. Beyond that, she offers no more help and leaves Stiles with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to return only if Stiles needs her.

His dad spends time with Derek as much as he can before he needs to leave for work because he’d promised a friend he would work a double shift to cover for him. “Feed him every 4 hours at the most. You’ll know when he’s hungry. I’ll call you every couple of hours just in case. I’ll see you later kiddo.”

Stiles watches him pull out of the driveway, Derek blowing raspberries against the shirt on Stiles’s shoulder. “Guess it’s just you and me, pal.” Derek laughs, and his fangs pop out, dangerously close to Stiles’s skin.

Stiles thinks Derek is insanely focused for a baby. He’s really good with eye contact and doesn’t really make too much noise unless being prompted. It all makes sense; Derek never really was a  social butterfly. So he sits and plays with the plush wolf Stiles bought him and laughs when Stiles trips trying to clean up the living room but otherwise is relatively quiet. In the first couple of hours, Stiles thinks he may be getting the hang of things.

But it all goes to hell during bathtime.

They’re perfectly fine at first. Stiles gets him sitting in the tub and holds him up as he washes off some remnants of peas from his neck. He even starts playing with a bath toy and drags it around through the lukewarm water with a frustrated look. But when Stiles squirts some body wash in his hands and rubs it together to create bubbles, Derek completely has a fit. He _screams,_ scaring the shit out of Stiles who falls onto the bathroom floor in his shock. He grabs ahold of Derek’s shoulders with soapy hands as he wails, starts trying to comfort him, but it only makes Derek cry harder.

Stiles washes him off as Derek claws at him, desperately, like he’s trying to evade Stiles’s hands lathering his skin. “I don’t _care_ if you don’t like baths, Derek Hale, you are going to finish it,” he growls as Derek’s fangs protrude out and he starts snapping at him. “For God’s sake, stop being a _baby,”_ he snaps without thinking and Derek halts, going silent. Stiles starts feeling monumentally crappy when Derek’s bottom lip starts trembling and his wide eyes fill with tears.

He hurries to pour water over Derek’s body and scoops him up with one of the baby towels before Derek gets the chance to really start crying, and Stiles mumbles into his ear that he didn’t mean to yell at him. All Derek does is rub his face against Stiles’s neck roughly, and Stiles is very confused, because he is less upset than Stiles had thought he would be, but more desperate to hug Stiles closer.

Stiles feels a sense of dread and hugs Derek closer. If he can’t handle a few hours with Derek without yelling at him, how is he going to survive the next few days?

“I think I was wrong. You’re more confusing as a baby.” Derek slumps over in his arms with a yawn and tugs at his ears gently. Stiles can’t help but grin at him and continue wiping gently at his back to get rid of the water dripping onto the bathroom floor.

He puts Derek in a different pair of pajamas (white ones with monkeys all over it) and then sets him down in his crib for a nap at four o’clock, from which he wakes up after only an hour. Stiles pauses his movie with a groan and blinks open tired eyes, standing up to get Derek. After ten minutes of bouncing him up and down, he sets him back down, only for Derek to start screaming ten minutes later.

He repeats the pattern a few times, and when he finds himself getting exhausted at eight o’clock, he slides down on the couch and settles Derek on his chest to watch some TV, hoping that it will calm Derek enough to go to sleep. He ends up falling asleep on the couch with Derek cuddled into the crevice of his neck, his little knees jabbing into Stiles’s side.

Oddly enough, when they fall asleep, he and Derek both sleep nearly through the night until Derek wakes him at five in the morning by wailing into his ear. He nearly falls off the couch and smashes Derek when he wakes up, and he decides that falling asleep that way will be their little secret. It would probably be significantly less dangerous to sleep with Derek on the couch considering his super-healing hardware, but it would still freak his dad out if he knew Stiles allowed himself to fall asleep with a baby on the couch.

Stiles’s eyes feel sunken in with exhaustion when he opens them, and his muscles ache everywhere. Even lacrosse never used to make him this tired, and the fact that it’s only been one day has Stiles wanting to send a letter to every parent to thank them for their effort.

On autopilot, Stiles begins the process of heating Derek’s bottle and starts measuring the proper amount of food into a cup to feed him.  At the same, he fries himself two eggs and scarfs them down while Derek stares at them hungrily. Stiles hums and then dials Deaton’s number.

“Stiles?”

“Hey, can werewolf babies eat meat?” Stiles chews his toast thoughtfully. “And like, normal people food?”

“Not quite,” Deaton answers, and Stiles gets the vibe that he had been expecting something more important at such an early hour. But whatever, if Stiles had to be up, he’s going to make sure the rest of them suffer with him until this is solved. “They _could,_ technically, because of their immune system boost, but they’re not invincible. He probably hasn’t puked because his stomach doesn’t react to certain foods like a baby’s does, so I wouldn’t push your luck.”

“How do you know he hasn’t--”

“You haven’t called me about it yet; I just figured. New parents always worry about those things.” He sounds amused, and Stiles mocks him under his breath.

“Right,” Stiles huffs. He shoves another spoon of peaches into Derek’s waiting mouth, wincing as Derek’s lengthened teeth scrape him. “So since he’s still an alpha, could he turn someone right now?”

Deaton tuts, like that’s something he hadn’t considered before. “I don’t think so. It’s a matter of will, turning someone. This hasn’t ever happened before, though, so I would be cautious just in case.”

“No teeth near me, Derek, you heard him,” Stiles warns when Derek snaps his teeth for more food. “So has anything come up yet?”

“I’m in the process of looking, and I may have a lead. Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

“What is it?”

“A group of supernatural entities that have moved into the Beacon Hills area.” There’s some rustling over the phone that sounds like paperwork.

Stiles waits for him to continue. “Is that all?”

“I’m on _vacation,_ mister Stilinski,” Deatons reminds him. Stiles sighs tiredly.

“Right, okay. I’ll call tomorrow.”

“I’d ask you to refrain from that, but I know you will anyways. I’ll talk to you tomorrow then, Stiles.”

“Bye,” Stiles says as he bites into his eggs, puts his phone down after he hangs up.

 

-

 

He spends the next few days in a flurry of feed, burp, change, play, call Deaton, and then sleep. He doesn’t give Stiles anything to go off of, and when Stiles has a panic attack with the fear that Derek will never come back, and scares the shit out of Derek who starts sobbing anxiously, Stiles resolves to not sit around and wait for other people to get things done.

Late at night as Derek and his dad are asleep (he’d tried looking earlier but Derek had poked at his laptop screen to nearly breaking), Stiles pulls open his computer to search through his file of the bestiary, scrolling past the files he’s added to the top of the pile and everything they’ve encountered that Stiles has put away for safekeeping.

From the guest bedroom echoes a haunting wail that can only be described as unadulterated fear. Stiles immediately knows that something is deadly wrong, because it sounds like _screaming;_ he nearly knocks the entire coffee table over and he slams the door to the room open in his haste. “Derek!” The yells in shock at the sight that greets him.

The crib has gone up in flames one on side, and Derek is lying in the opposite corner crying his eyes out and yelling unintelligible words, clawing at the black tufts of hair around his face. He’s feebly trying to paw at the fire, to get it away from him, shrieking as the fire burns his palms.

Stiles runs over to the crib, avoiding the side still on fire, reaching his arms out. Stiles chokes on smoke and heat as he scrambles to get ahold. It burns his hands to be that close to the flames but he manages to get there long enough to pick Derek up by the shoulders and haul him out just before a lick of flames touches his arm and burns his skin.

In his fear, Derek claws Stiles in the arm, deep enough to draw blood but Stiles’s dad is already taking Derek from him and he can’t _think,_ other than the fact that he has to stop the fire somehow, can’t even focus enough on the pain. They both leave the smoking room and Stiles sprints across  to the bathroom.

They used to have a fire extinguisher in the basement that they’d kept for years, just in case, because his dad is a sheriff and it’s his job to be overly cautious. Derek had once told him, alone in Stiles’s Jeep on a stakeout, about how his family had died, trapped indoors in a sweltering fire, staring up angrily at the stars. He’s kept the extinguisher in the bathroom ever since. Stiles has never told Derek directly, but he thinks Derek knew, and he had always hoped that it made him feel more comfortable.

He scrambles to the room with the extinguisher before the fire can reach anywhere except for the crib and puts it out, winces at the burning heat on his face. He presses the nozzle a few extra times just for good measure.  Beyond the ringing in his ears, Stiles can just barely hear the sound of Derek crying in the living room, and he drops the extinguisher with a clatter, feels his head spin.

His dad is hugging Derek but the baby isn’t calm at all; he’s completely wolfed out now. Broken howling noises tear from his throat every few seconds and he’s growling furiously, but there’s no mistaking the fear in Derek’s eyes. Stiles makes a broken noise in the back of his throat. His dad hands Derek over and Stiles collapses with him in his arms.  

“Oh my god,” Stiles says, voice cracking, and it’s hard to say why he cares so much seeing Derek like this; frail and afraid and too tiny to defend himself. But his heart beats a rhythm in his chest and he clutches Derek closer, whispering “oh my god,” like it will bury him deeper into his skin and keep him there, safe.

He can vaguely register his dad calling Scott and telling him to come over, but he’s too busy freaking out and holding Derek close that he doesn’t do anything except run a hand through Derek’s thin hair and avoid his father’s gaze.

Scott arrives in less than ten minutes, and Stiles’s dad gives him a hard time about speeding, but lets him in through the front door into where Stiles is sitting against the wall with Derek. Derek growls in his arms when he catches sight of Scott and Stiles hushes him.

“Hey dude,” Scott says, gently. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Stiles croaks, throat sore from smoke inhalation. “Are you here to assist with your super senses, Scooby Doo?”

Scott snorts and helps Stiles stands up. He rubs a hand over Stiles’s back which does wonders to calm him down, even though Derek is growling defensively. “Maybe we can see what’s going on.”

Stiles leads him to the guest bedroom where smoke is still feeding out from under the doorway. His dad had opened a window the hopefully ventilate the area, but the room is still foggy when they step inside. Stiles hands Derek over to his dad, away from the smoke, and goes inside with Scott to investigate.

“Are you getting anything besides fire?” Stiles asks, “Cause all I’ve got is fire.”

“Yeah,” Scott answers, wrinkling his nose. “There’s something else. It smells like trees and rubber.” He reaches into the smoldering crib and takes out Derek’s stuffed plushie. Giving it a sniff, he passes it over to Stiles. “This is where it’s coming from.” Stiles takes it, and winces at the heat still emanating from it into his fingers.

“Why would this…” Stiles trails off, looking at the charred paws of the stuffed wolf. He snaps his fingers. “It was a hex.”

 

-

 

“So, witches,” Stiles says as a greeting when Deaton picks up. “Witches moved into town.”

“Yes,” Deaton answers.

“And somehow they’re trying to get at Derek because he’s the Alpha and there’s probably a power struggle.”

“Most likely.”

Stiles sighs in frustration. “They tried to set him on fire last night, Deaton, so maybe instead of holding things back, it would be more beneficial to inform us about the things you find out.”

“They sound more dangerous than I’d anticipated.” Deaton sounds the least amount of concerned as one person could be.

“I almost got my _house burned down,”_ Stiles says, yearning for at least some compassion from the man.

Deaton doesn’t seem to understand that, and asks, “Was there an item that could have been hexed?”

“Yes. A stuffed animal that Derek sleeps with. They set his crib on fire in the middle of the night.”

“Scott was able to get a scent on it, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then Scott should be able to track them down by their scent.” There’s a staticy noise for a second, and Deaton says, “Witches have a sort of scent that each coven gives off when they use magic. Some smell like flowers or herbs, it all depends.”

“Can’t Derek smell who the people are, though?” Stiles asks. He rubs at his temples tiredly. “He must remember it from before.”

Deatons hums. “Well not necessarily. Magic usually gives off a smell so similar to wilderness that a werewolf child most likely would think of the scent as not mysterious. It’s later on that children learn to differentiate between underlying scents. And anything that smells of trees is a comfort to the wolf part of the child.”

“There’s nothing else you can give me?”

“I’m doing my best right now, but these things take time.”

“We just have to hope he doesn’t get killed in the meantime, then,” Stiles snaps. He hangs up on Deaton and when Derek smiles easily from his spot in his high chair with his little plate, he feels sick.

 

-

 

His dad thinks it best that Stiles sleep with Derek in his bed after the mishap so he’s not alone, and Stiles, though hesitant about the baby-crushing possibilities, couldn’t agree more. He gives Derek his usual nighttime bath and puts him in pajamas with a bulldog and the caption “Sleepy Head.” The sight of Derek, still angry from being forced into bathtime in such a cute outfit puts Stiles into a laughing fit.

Since Derek’s blankets were burned in the crib, Stiles starts searching through his closet for a new one before bedtime. when he notices Derek making cooing noises at the stack of his childhood stuffed animals on the shelf, he ignores him in his search. But eventually, Derek starts whining and reaching with stubby fingers towards them, and Stiles gives him a pissed off look. “Hold _on,_ here, just take this,” Stiles says, blindly grabbing for a stuffed animal and handing it over.

The noises completely stop right after that, Stiles looks over at Derek, cuddling at his stuffed animal with his face buried into the fur, and his noises are just muffled by the animal he’s clutching on to. Stiles realizes that he’d handed Derek his favorite stuffed animal as a kid, a small red rabbit that actually had a freaky kind of face, but Stiles had carried it with him until he was twelve anyways, three years after his mom had died.

Stiles feels a pang in his chest and he considers taking it back, but then Derek starts falling asleep on his shoulder, tugging at his ears, yawning and sloping over until his head rests against Stiles’s collarbone. “Yeah, okay.”

He eventually finds a blanket and wraps Derek in it like a burrito (his dad had called it swaddling, and said that only newborns needed it, but Stiles likes to call it “burrito-ing,” and insisted that Derek loved it), carrying him over to bed, flicking off the light on his way. His bones creak as he goes down, slowly and shifting Derek so that he’s safely nestled in the crook of Stiles’s elbow and the blanket isn’t around him so much. Stiles lets out a gloriously stretched out and brain melting yawn, falling asleep almost immediately after, like his yawn has sucked the energy right out of him.

Derek won’t let go of his rabbit after they wake up and always keeps it close to his face as Stiles carries him around and lets him crawl in his little play area while he watches TV and looks through the “Witch” section of the bestiary.

His dad comes home at lunchtime, and the way he freezes in the doorway and looks at Derek makes him pause in his scrolling. “What?”

His dad seems to shake himself and the confused look off his face. He crosses his arms and shakes his head. “Nothing. I just haven’t seen that thing in a long time. It was always your favorite.”

“I know.”

“You always used to say it smelled like your mom,” his dad adds thoughtfully.

Stiles looks at him. “Really?”

“Yeah. After a time, it stopped smelling like her, because you ran out of her perfume to spray on it. Then you put it away and didn’t touch it again.”

Stiles notices a pang of sadness that he always feels when his dad talks about his mom. He frowns at Derek where he’s sniffing at the rabbit’s ear, pulling it up and sticking his little nose underneath.

“Maybe it’s something like that for him, too,” His dad supplies, “Right now you’re the most important person to him, so something that smells like you…”

Stiles feels a strange fluttering in his chest at this, at the fact that maybe his scent is the most important thing to Derek. He smiles crookedly at Derek, who is watching them serenely. He kneels down off the couch and crawls over to where Derek is sprawled on his stomach. “You like how I smell, don’t you buddy? I smell awesome, I bet. I’m never letting you live this down,” he adds, even though he knows for a fact that he’ll most likely never ever bring it up again for the sake of Derek’s and his own manliness.

His dad laughs, and tells him he’s making lunch before his evening shift. Stiles doesn’t really pay attention because he starts tickling Derek and blowing large raspberries onto his stomach as Derek wiggles on the floor, his fangs flashing out every time he laughs too hard. He sort of lays there on the carpet with Derek due to his laziness, and lets Derek crawl on him and prod at his face. Stiles kisses his palm with an obnoxious squeaking noise just to make Derek laugh.

With one hand, Stiles lifts Derek up and looks at him; unfocused eyes from the shock of moving so fast and his dark hair sticking up everywhere from random baby shenanigans. But Derek focuses soon enough, and grasps at the sides of Stiles’s face with a sudden, serious expression. He pulls Stiles closer, just to stare at him; they get closer and closer until Stiles’s eyes lose focus and Derek keeps a hold of him by the ears. Stiles lets him stay there as long as he wants, even though his inability to focus on anything is giving him a headache, and nuzzles Derek’s nose.

His dad drops his plate onto the floor when dinner is done, and Derek still hasn’t released his grip.

 

-

(Artwork done by loserchildhotpants on tumblr)

(artwork by colekiss on tumblr)

-

 

Boyd eventually sacrifices a day to watch Derek so Scott and Stiles can do some investigating through town. He drives up on his motorcycle that looks like a deathtrap and Derek squeals in delight at the noise. Even though Stiles has left a list for him with all of the necessary food, at the last minute, Stiles feels a twinge of hesitation.

“Dude, I’ll be fine,” Boyd grunts after a couple of minutes of Stiles hedging and double-checking that everything is set right. He rolls his sleeves up, like this is going to be a big project (Stiles has no doubt Derek is going to be difficult with him) and lifts Derek from his play area. “You need to go, we’ll be okay.”

Stiles lets out a huff, crosses his foot behind the other. Of course, he realizes, he’s being completely ridiculous and overprotective. “Yeah, cool, sorry. Let’s go.”

Derek starts crying as soon as Stiles gets in the car, whining his name in baby-talk, but Stiles refuses to look at him, backing out and heading out while Scott turns the radio on to distract him.

 

-

 

After they spend twenty minutes driving through the rural areas, they admit that neither of them had really come up with a plan at all. They stop for dinner at a diner, and while Stiles spoons pancakes, pooled with too much syrup, into his mouth, he discusses the possibilities of dangers and assures Scott that _yes,_ he’s capable of taking care of himself. Really, all they have to go off of is Scott’s sense of smell, so Scott is going to be their own form of navigation to find the coven.

Stiles starts doubting his plan when they don’t find a single hint, and his Jeep has a nearly empty tank of gas. “We should probably head back and try again tomorrow--”

But funnily enough, Scott jerks his head out of his window, mutters “I smell it,” interrupting him.

Stiles, very unsafely, slams on his breaks. They were only going twenty, but Scott still yells at him anyways for unsafe driving. “Shut up, what do you smell?” Stiles demands, cutting him off.

“There’s that rubber smell. I think this is it,” Scott tells him with a definitive nod a second later.

“Awesome,” Stiles grunts, pulling over onto the shoulder and parking. “Lead the way, Sparky.”

Scott punches him in the arm hard, gets out with a crunch of leaves. Stiles zips his hoodie up to his chest and follows close behind. The air is chilly enough for him to suppress a shiver, but he thinks that could also be his forming anxiety over getting Derek back to normal. “Probably should have brought more than a bat,” Scott comments with a wry smile.

“Hey,” Stiles says, lifting the bat to point it, “You’re the one who started the bat thing. You have claws, I’ve got a bat.”

“I know, I know. Be careful.”

Stiles smiles. “Always am.”

“Not careful enough, though,” a calm voice rings out behind them, completely out of nowhere. Scott growls, in a defensive stance, and Stiles falls to the ground from someone pushing him over. All he can sense is the sounds of grunts and a hauntingly loud howl, but Stiles can’t really move, keeps his grip on his bat desperately.

There’s a hissing noise that Stiles can’t trace until he lifts his face from the ground and it’s apparently the tree next to him, a green glowing spot radiating where his chest was just a second ago.

“Oh,” he says.

He tries to look for Scott and promptly gets kicked in the face, stumbling back until his face meets the ground again. It must have been a boot that got him, Jesus _Christ;_ Stiles clutches at his face to try and dull the pain, with no success.

“So you’re the babysitters, huh?” The same voice says, right over his face, which means Scott must have been caught.

“Fuck,” Stiles rubs at his jaw with shaky hands. “That was unnecessary force.” He finally musters the guts to look up again, and he instantly notices the silver-haired girl standing a few feet away. “You’re kidding me. It was _you guys?”_

“You know,” the girl over him says, and up close she looks like she could almost be thirty, but he knows that she can’t really be that old. Magic ends up taking a toll on those who use it for too long, and Stiles would point that out but he’s afraid of getting kicked again.  Realistically, she seems like she could only be seventeen at the most. “For a member of the Hale pack, your detective work needs some… well. _Work.”_

“You’ve heard about us, though?” Stiles asks, and flicks his eyes to Scott. That young girl is standing off to the side where a young boy is holding Scott’s arms behind his back. There’s two other men, knocked out on the ground so Scott must have gotten to them first. The silver-haired girl has a dagger held to Scott’s neck and it’s shaking slightly. He looks up to the woman over him, with strikingly similar features. “How about that, Scott?” He winks, because now he has a plan.

“Yeah,” Scott chokes, stumbles a little bit, his face ashen.

“A wolfsbane blade and twine?” Stiles asks when he’s down, looking back to the group. Throwing caution to the wind, he sits up and the girl makes a warning tut-tut noise. He throws his palms out to show his innocence. “That’s pretty good to stop a werewolf, but uh, just so you know, I have no supernatural abilities.” He stands up and wipes his jeans free of leaves while the pushy girl orders him to sit down. With narrowed eyes, he asks, “do you know what I _do_ have?”

One of the slumbering boys starts shaking himself awake, and at the state of the field, throws himself at Stiles. It’s quick thinking that allows Stiles to get the proper grip on the kid’s neck and to push in, knocking him to the ground. He makes sure nobody sees what he does and whispers, “That was some pretty good timing,” before the boy goes down with a grunt.

The guy holding Scott’s arms back with the magical twine drops to the ground with a shriek suddenly, clenching his hands to his chest. The silver haired girl rushes to his side immediately, shrieking his name. When he pulls trembling hands away, they’ve burned tresses into his palms. “What did you do?” he demands, whimpering in pain.

“You don’t know?” Stiles tuts, and even Scott is staring at him in anticipation, and confusion. “Well I don’t suppose you would, because you basically read your spells off of a cereal box. I’m what you’d call a spark.”  

The silvery-girl looks up horrified, and exclaims, “That means…”

“That I’m the real deal?” Stiles says, pleasure coursing through his veins at the fear in her eyes. “Yeah. I don’t need any voodoo books to read out of or mysterious chemicals. Just some wolfsbane.” He shrugs halfway to the side. “Scott,” he points to the oldest teen, and Scott takes action immediately, clutching her by the neck with just enough claws to stab and not draw blood.

The girl shrieks where she’s bent over the wounded man, with panic in her eyes. “Please, no!”

Stiles meets her eyes. He gestures with his chin to the panting teenager  in Scott’s grip. “This your sister?”

“Yes,” she answers, and the “adult”  makes a noise in the back of her throat that Stiles can tell is a warning.

“Morgan,” the guy says, looking just as fearful as the young girl does.

“Shut it,” Morgan says, and Scott tightens his grip when she tries to maneuver her way out.

Stiles walks up to her, smells cigarettes, or bonfires. “Listen, it’s real simple. All you have to do is turn our friend back.” She makes a disagreeing noise, but otherwise can’t speak past the hand pressing into her throat. “What was that?”

  
Scott loosens his hold enough for her to laugh in his face and furiously deny doing anything he wants. Stiles shakes his head. “Fucking teenage witches. You guys seriously need to get ahold of yourselves.”

“You’re younger than us,” Morgan defends childishly.

Stiles makes a dramatic gesture with his hands to show how flabbergasted he is. “Yes! And you should know better than to fuck around with magic that you can’t control! Because I’m younger and I still have more common sense than you!”

“We can control it,” Morgan hisses defensively.

“Ridiculous,” Stiles says, completely ignoring her. He stops from where he’s pacing and looks the group over. “Though I know that Derek probably deserved what you did to him, you can’t just use magic all willy nilly. Are you going to change my friend back?”

Morgan hisses in fury. “Are you going to say _please?”_ she asks back, and spits at his feet.

“Your parents should have grounded you more,” Stiles says with a scowl. “I _could_ say please, or I could have my friend Scott here chop your vocal chords ‘till you’re sing like an accordion. It’s your choice really.”

As if they were waiting for that moment, the trees to Stiles’s left and right rustle and Stiles is aware that it must be Erica and Isaac looking for them. He silently thanks Scott for calling backup while he was getting his ass kicked, and motions to his sides with each hand. “Werewolves are very territorial animals, my friends,” he says, accompanied by low growling noises.

“Morgan,” the youngest girl says, frightened.

“Fine,” Morgan gasps. Her face is visibly losing blood and her breaths are coming heavier beneath Scott’s palm. “I said _fine.”_

“Let her go,” Stiles orders, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Don’t let her go far.”

The group is ushered into a larger clearing where they apparently have a camp set up. It really just consists of a tent with stacks of witchcraftian novels and spellbooks.

When Morgan performs the reversal spell, Stiles has a moment of panic that he would end up becoming a frog or something, but then the woods fill with the scent of fresh grass and trees, then a crisp smell of snow, a muggy rain scent, and then Stiles bumps back to the present. When his head clears, he feels like he has travelled through time in the span of forty seconds and his mind spins. He also can’t feel his feet up to his knees, and his vision blurs while he’s looking down at them.

Wracked with paranoia that something has gone wrong, Stiles orders, “Scott,” and Morgan grunts in anger as Scott restrains her roughly against his chest. His eyes glow a halfway shade between red and yellow, and he looks just as tilt-a-whirled as Stiles feels, but his grip is steady.

“I did it!” Morgan whines, and Stiles blinks at her. “You feel sick because that’s what the magic does. You should _know_ that.” Silver girl is watching him hesitantly.

“Oh, that’s not why,” Stiles replies, even though that’s exactly why. “I have other intentions.” Before they can grill him on what they are, he senses the feeling of his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulls it out, while Isaac mutters about priorities, to see that it’s a text from Boyd.

 

_[Friday, 5:34] Looks like Derek’s back_

_[Friday, 5:34] He’s sort of naked. And angry. What do I do?_

 

_[Friday, 5:34] I have his clothes in my room. Is everything normal? Can he remember everything?_

 

“Can we go now,” the guy asks, holding his hands up. “I have things to do, you know.” Scott growls, close to Morgan’s face and Stiles can tell by the way she gasps in her next breath, he’s tightened his grip. Stiles feels a sick kind of vindication when her eyes flicker with fear.

“Keep her there, Scott.” Scott does what he’s told, and Morgan rolls her eyes. Stiles catches it but decides to ignore it, and checks his phone again. “We just need to make sure my friend at home is in perfect condition, and well, it’s good to have some incentive to make sure that happens, correct?” He keeps his head bent down but lifts his eyes like he’s seen his dad do all of the time, knowing that it makes everyone nervous.

“I guess,” one of the boys says, rubbing at his head, confused. Stiles rolls his eyes; he can see why it was so easy to catch them.

_[Friday 5:37] Everything is good. He’s demanding to know where you are._

“Everything is okay,” Stiles tells the group, frozen and tense. They all thaw out when they hear this, and Scott lets Morgan go with a hesitant slap to her bicep. It’s his way of checking that she’s okay but she just scowls at him in return. “But trust me,” Stiles says, feeling exhausted from being the one calling the shots; it feels like too much pressure is on his shoulders. “I wouldn’t stick around town once the Alpha figures out who you are.”

Morgan and her sister exchange a look that assures Stiles that they definitely intend to skip town as soon as possible. The boys are trying to size Erica and Isaac up, though, and Stiles figures they’re probably not worth the time. He nods, satisfied and tired.

“Let’s go, then. You guys have a nice day.” Scott touches his back when they make their way back, and Stiles catches the scent of cologne. He halts in his steps, turns. “Hey.”

“Yes?” Morgan asks, and at least she now seems hesitant to give him too much of an attitude.

“One thing,” Stiles begins. “How did you know to bring Derek to _my_ house?”

She shrugs. “His jacket. We saw him wearing it twenty-four seven, then we kept it and used the most prominent scent on there, besides his own, to track you with a honing crystal. It was easy; you were the only other human scent.” She tosses her hair and continues stacking her books back into place.

“Right.” The most prominent scent--the _only_ scent--had been Stiles’s.

 

-

 

“Not that I’m complaining about your hospitality during stakeouts,” Stiles starts, chewing obscenely on the Big Mac Derek had bought him, “but you need to adjust the heat in your car or something.”

“What do you mean,” Derek asks, and takes a bite of his chicken sandwich. He chews slowly, almost reverently, and Stiles is stuck watching him, the bob of his adam’s apple, until he realizes what he’s doing and shakes himself awake. He’ll be okay, he can blame it on his current exhaustion if Derek points out his prolonged staring. It’s okay though, because he doesn’t and refocuses his attention on their stakeout. Stiles tries to do the same, but ends up watching Derek watching the building instead, very counterproductively.

With another bite, Stiles continues, “Well it’s fucking cold. I shouldn’t have to rely on my food as a source of heat.”

“Putting the heat on wastes gas,” Derek grumbles, eyes fixed on the apartment building.

Stiles snorts, steals one of his fries and, when Derek doesn’t notice, another. This time, Derek sees him and snatches the fries away with a glare. “You’re filthy rich. I’ll pay you the five extra bucks it will cost to turn the heat up until this thing is done with,” Stiles offers.

“God,” Derek breathes heavily, like Stiles is a plague on his life, eyes rolling up. But despite his expression, Derek slides his jacket off of his shoulders and hands it over with a far too serious look Stiles’s way.

Stiles stares at the piece of clothing for too long, his gaze flickering to Derek’s face just in case he’s joking. He doesn’t want to get his hand torn off because that jacket is actually a part of Derek’s identity and he was being sarcastic. “Well-- take it,” Derek asserts, pushes it closer again until Stiles catches it in his fingers.

The black leather is cold on his already-freezing fingers but the inside is insulated, warm with Derek’s body heat when he slips it over his shoulders. He doesn’t put his arms through the sleeves yet, just lets his hands get warmed by the cotton interior.  There’s a scent that indescribably Derek, and he wants to make a joke about the smell of pain, but instead breathes in the musk and Derek’s not even looking at the apartment complex anymore. “What?”

“Nothing,” Derek says, too quickly and high-pitched for it to actually be nothing. Stiles still, after all this time, doesn’t feel brave enough to point that out.

“If you care about this,” he says instead, pulling on the lapel of the jacket, “why don’t you just turn the heat on?”

“I don’t care about the jacket,” Derek replies loftily, fixing his gaze away. But that doesn’t last, because Derek’s eyes turn sideways, like he’s checking to see if Stiles is still watching him, and since he is, Derek turns his head all the way. “Really.”

“Well... thanks, then,” Stiles eventually mutters, his voice thick. Derek’s eyes are dark and he swallows, nodding back.

“We should probably go in,” Derek says, head bowed. “Check the place out.”

“Right.” Stiles is fully thawed and follows Derek out of the car and into the building.

Ten minutes later, Stiles is running for his life, Derek’s jacket flapping behind them as the landlord, fully morphed into a chaos monster, chases them down the street. Derek doesn’t ask for it back until the next week, when the temperature is actually warm like summer should be.

 

-

 

Scott is too quiet on the car ride back to his house, and Stiles turns onto his street, snaps, “what?”

“Well…” Scott hesitates. “You said you’re a spark.” He looks worried, like Stiles has been hiding this from him the whole time and he can’t understand why. “And you did all of that stuff.” Stiles feels a rush of affection for him for being so blind, and finally the last of the nervous tension leaves his shoulders.

He laughs, and says “A can-do attitude will let you bullshit anything.”

Scott gapes at him. “You’re kidding.”

He has a childish look of amazement on his face, and Stiles lets out a boisterous laugh. “They’re just kids. Kids that don’t have experience with this kind of stuff. It was easy.”

“Then how did you burn the guy’s hands?”

Stiles smirks. “Wolfsbane doesn’t just repel werewolves. And since he was using magic and wolfsbane at the same time, it obviously didn’t have a good reaction.”

“So you didn’t even do any of that” Scott marvels.

“Nah. It was just good timing.”

They laugh all the way home, and Stiles screeches to a stop, screaming, when Derek runs out into the driveway, right in front of his car. Derek sways like he’s disoriented and doesn’t seem to register they’re there until Stiles presses his palm against his steering wheel to honk the horn.  Derek isn’t even wearing a shirt and looks shaken, the most like a crazed animal he’s ever seen him. Granted, he still looks normal, but the frantic way he’s shaking his head is concerning. He still has the scruff from when he was last seen as an adult dusted across his face.

  
Derek’s eyes aren’t red when he finally sees them, but they’re dark, like he’s just managing to control the shift. He extends a hand, and Stiles wants to yell at him because that’s the _worst_ way to defend yourself from being hit by a car. “Hey! Pedestrians don’t get the right of way in driveways!” he actually ends up yelling out of the window with a pissed off wave of his hand.

“Stiles!” Derek says back, and his stance shifts as he straightens his back when Stiles and Scott step out of the car; Isaac and Boyd tumble out of the front door, obviously chasing after Derek, Boyd with the shirt Derek should be wearing in his hands. He extends his hand and Derek takes it from him, slips it on over his head, and Stiles tries not to stare at the slit of skin still revealed.

“It took all this time to get him dressed?” Stiles jokes, swallowing, because Derek is still staring at him with an unreadable expression. He’s trying and failing not to imagine Isaac and Boyd trying to get pants on an angry and disoriented Derek. It’s a pleasing thought, to say the least.

Derek makes a displeased noise and rolls his eyes. “I just woke up a couple of minutes ago.”

“Well it’s good to have you back,” Scott says with a small smile, and Stiles is surprised by how earnest he sounds. Scott looks like he almost tugs at his hair, then realizes that it’s not shaggy and long anymore and drops his hand awkwardly.

Derek apparently shares the sentiment, and his face softens a miniscule amount. Stiles thinks of how Derek as a baby was so defensive around Scott, and how this is the most pleasant change he’s experienced the whole week. Derek still looks like he’s pissed at the universe, but he actually pats Scott on the shoulder now, instead of growling at him. “Thank you.”

Scott makes a disagreeing noise. “Don’t thank me. Stiles was the one that got you back; he literally used us as muscle.” He hands over Derek’s jacket-- Morgan had given it back after a couple of threats-- and Derek slips that on, too.

Derek nods, straightening his shoulders. He looks away from Stiles finally, and Stiles isn’t sure at this point if Derek pointedly not looking at him feels worse than the way he’d been staring just a second ago or better. Pointing, Derek gives orders to Boyd and Isaac for damage control, and Stiles realizes that Derek hadn’t thanked him at all.

Stiles feels something twist in his stomach and says, “Great, now that everyone’s happy…”

He pushes his way past Derek, ignoring the way he says his name when he passes-- quiet and reserved-- into his house and stares at the ceiling when the door slams behind him. With closed eyes, he hits both of his fists against the door and then straightens up. The tug he gives his own hair is enough to hurt.  

The sight of all the toys littering the couch and floor throws him into a frenzy. He tucks all of the stuffed animals under his arm and picks up Derek’s favorite toy, a tiny colorful drum-set with a broken symbol, and basically throws it in the garage, where it all lands with a large clatter. He ignores the sound of the front door opening because he’s stuffing the leftover bottles into the bottom corner cabinet in his kitchen, crouched on his hands and knees, desperate to forget all of it, because it wasn’t even worth anything to anyone except himself.

Derek muttering, “Need some help?” right next to his ear makes him shout and stumble to the ground while his hands flail out to his sides. Derek is squatting down on the tile, hands clasped in front of his knees and is watching him intently, like Stiles is a wounded animal. Stiles feels that, in a metaphorical way, he might actually be licking his paws right now.

“No,” Stiles says, when he realizes that Derek is expecting an answer. He uses the counter instead of Derek’s offered hand to stand up and Derek closes the cabinet for him. “No thank you,” Stiles repeats. “I don’t need any help.”

He didn’t think it would be so difficult, Derek staring at him that way. Everything’s changed for Stiles. It’s all different now because Derek doesn’t need him anymore like he has for the past week, not in the same way. And Derek is stuck in the ways he always has been, staring down at Stiles, condescending. It was never easy, either, when Derek was a baby, but when Derek couldn’t talk Stiles didn’t live with the doubt that Derek depended on him. Stiles feels anger budding up again, deep in his chest.  “I just need to get rid of all of this stuff and forget this ever happened. That would be _great.”_

“Thank you, for all of this,” Derek says, quiet, stopping Stiles in his tracks. He’s staring at the floor when Stiles turns around, a handful of bottle lids in his hands, and almost looks like a bashful teenager.

“Right,” Stiles says. “Look, it was no big deal, I didn’t have anything to do this summer anyways.” Stiles knows past the frantic beating of his heart that there’s a tick in there somewhere.

Derek’s got this half-guarded smile gracing his face-- Stiles’s breath hitches, startlingly loud in the silence because for all the cuteness as a baby, this Derek always managed to take his breath away more. “What?”

The smile fades and is replaced by something much more serious, and Derek takes half a step forward, and then another. Stiles matches him, because he’s still kind of hesitant of Derek’s all-thereness and is still having mixed emotions about everything.

“Okay, I lied, it was kind of a big deal. Just don’t go getting--” Stiles’s fearful rant gets cut off as Derek tugs him in against his rock-hard chest. The beat of his heart is steady in Stiles’s ear where it’s smashed into Derek’s neck, and Stiles relaxes when he realizes that it’s a _hug,_ and awkwardly claps his back. “A big head,” he finally finishes with a sigh, relieved.

Derek doesn’t let go after a few seconds, burying his face into Stiles’s neck and breathing in heavily, then exhaling shakily, like he’s trying to hold it. “Uh,” Stiles says. Derek is making  snuffling noises and for all that Stiles wants to touch his body, he  doesn’t quite know where he should put his hands. He settles for placing them on the lower dip of his back and lets Derek just… sniff at him.

Which is kind of weird, he realizes belatedly, when Derek jumps away with a foggy, conflicted stare and then leaves him alone in the kitchen with a flushed face, mussed hair, wondering what the hell just happened.

Derek doesn’t answer the phone when Stiles texts, multiple times. Instead of waiting for a reply to his third one, Stiles sits up against the kitchen counter and tosses his phone up onto the granite so he can’t stare at it. He drives almost all of the baby things in their living room to the goodwill, makes his dad a late dinner of homemade pizza for when he gets home at midnight, and falls asleep with his clothes still on.

 

-

 

Stiles wakes up with a cotton-mouth and feels like shit as soon as he opens his eyes. One look at his bedside clock tells him two things: that it’s only five AM, and that it’s way too early to be awake. When he rolls over, situates his blankets, and even fluffs his pillow, he still can’t manage to fall back asleep. So he grunts in frustration, rolls himself out of bed and nearly crawls to the bathroom. After a quick wash of his hair and a bowl of cereal that results in cinnamon toast crunch all over his counter, he figures he may as well get everything done then, and finishes picking everything else up off of the floor.

His phone is still sitting on the counter and when Stiles clicks the home button, he realizes that it’s died during the night. He runs upstairs and plugs it into the charger. His foot catches on something when he makes to leave, and he barely saves himself from face-planting into the hard floor by redirecting his fall to the bed. “Skill,” he mutters to himself and blindly reaches for what had tripped him.

It’s his red bunny, and Stiles laughs, shocked. The bunny’s left ear looks nearly ready to fall off from too much tugging; he picks at the thread until it’s only being held on by one little strand. He rolls over, completely on the bed, and shoves the bunny under his neck, inhaling the scent of baby powder and Derek. He starts thinking about how a person’s scent was so permeating, and then opens his eyes.  

He sits up, suddenly. “Ho _ly_ \--” he says, grabbing the bunny and his keys and running downstairs and out of the front door, past the kitchen where his dad is eating tiredly. His dad is too exhausted to ask where he’s going, and Stiles is too excited to care.

Derek’s door isn’t locked, so Stiles figures he can let himself in when he gets there. The house is quiet, but instead of calling Derek’s name like he wants to, he races through the house, trying to find him. When he gets closer to the back of the house, he hears a clatter and follows it to the kitchen.

Stiles is already breathing heavily when he finds Derek in one of his kitchen stools, staring at the doorway with an expectant look on his face. He’s sitting in front of a plate with a half-eaten omelette on it-- which is so adult and lonely, that it makes Stiles sad-- and he’s only in sweatpants and a gray t-shirt with too many holes and what looks like ancient blood stains on it. And even though it’s only six AM, he looks like he’s wide awake but exhausted all at the same time.

“You like how I smell.” Stiles accuses, tone angry. He shakes the stuffed rabbit at him, like it’s definitive proof, but all Derek does is raise his eyebrows.  

“Well, you’re sweaty right now,” he points out, like he’s not understanding at all. And that is _so_ not the point, so Stiles grunts in frustration.

“No. You-- all the time!” He fails his hands, because he’s failing with words, but soon enough, they spill out. “You liked this toy better than all of the other ones. I never played with any other toy. Dad said that it smelled like my mom and that’s why I liked it. But that was okay, I thought because you were a baby it was a comfort thing.”

“It was,” Derek points out.

Stiles puts a hand up. “ _No,_ but then there was the jacket. I was the only other scent on there besides you. You love your jacket, but you gave it to me,” Stiles fades away. He has a moment of terrifying clarity, like maybe he’s made all of this up and he looks to the floor, embarrassed. “Never mind, it’s stupid,” Stiles bites out. He keeps his gaze fixed down so he doesn’t have to endure Derek’s piercing gaze.

That’s when he sees the stacks of papers on Derek’s counter, and there’s no mistaking that they’re all unpaid bills. And that’s what finally breaks the camel’s back, because it too hard for him to work out his feelings when Derek is old and doesn’t show emotions like he did when he was just a child and still innocent-- it all reminds him how young he really is. It’s all different now because Derek doesn’t need him anymore like he has for the past week, not in the same way, and Stiles feels his irrational hope tumbling down into a deep chasm.

This time, Stiles is the one that leaves, with his tail between his legs and when the bunny’s ear finally falls off, he leaves it there in the dirt.

 

-

 

He completely ignores his dad and runs up to his room, collapsing into his bed like the angsting teenager that he is. But he clutches the rabbit closer, breathing in the smell of baby-Derek and he can’t help but smile. It’s so stupid, he thinks, feelings are _stupid,_ and the throws the stuffed animal across the wall just as Derek is crawling in through his window. Just like old times, Stiles thinks bitterly, but at the same time, everything has changed.

The rabbit hits just near Derek’s head, and Stiles clutches his pillow instead of getting up to get it.

“This would have been much easier for you if you would have talked to me at your house, instead of following me home, you know” Stiles points out, feeling raw and exposed with the way Derek is watching him. Derek’s feet pad on the carpet, and he’s wearing jeans and a different t-shirt now.

“You didn’t really give me a chance,” Derek explains, and Stiles is the most thrown by his earnest expression.

Stiles huffs despite his confusion. “You’ve never had a problem with telling me to shut up before.”

“Then shut up,” Derek says, and sounds so amused, with his teeth showing and everything, that Stiles _can’t_ just shut up.

“That’s not funny at all, you know,” Stiles says. “I’m having a pretty bad time dealing with all of this, so could you just _not_ add to everything that is confusing me right now, and stop being so damned cryptic?”

Derek has the gall to look genuinely confused. His eyebrows hitch down in the middle and he purses his lips. “I’m not being cryptic,” he tells Stiles, like he totally believes it.

“You _are!”_ Stiles almost-yells, before thinking about how his dad is still sitting with his face in a plate of home-made pizza just downstairs and can probably hear him. So he lowers his voice, says, “If we could just save the embarrassment of you rejecting me, that’d be cool.”

“I’m not rejecting you,” Derek says, mouth pursed.

Stiles is so used to this conversation--it usually ends the same way for them--that he starts saying, “God, the least you could do is--”

He’s cut off and instead of a palm covering his mouth to stop him from babbling, it’s Derek’s _mouth,_ and his mind does a complete one-eighty because whoa, Derek is kneeling gently over him with one knee on the bed and he’s cupping Stiles’s jaw with a broad, hot palm. Derek’s eyes are closed, tight and Stiles’s close in reply. All he can do in his shock is kiss back and shiver when there’s a tingle in his lower stomach as Derek’s other hand rubs over his hip and clutches there, fingers tight against Stiles’s quickly heating skin.

Stiles seems to finally understand what he’s saying for the first time, his mind startlingly clear, and he pulls back with a smack sound. “So, no rejection?”

Derek rolls his eyes, says “No,” and his lips are already so swollen that Stiles reaches back for his face and pulls, just to see how much more damage he can do to them. His legs and back start aching because he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, so with a huff of effort, Stiles tugs Derek down by the back of his collar until he collapses in a wave of muscle into Stiles’s chest.

"I called you so many times," Derek says, almost like he's angry.

Stiles says, "My phone died," and Derek reaches into his back pocket before he can say any more, pulling out his own phone and flicking through his photos.

"Erica sent me this last night," he says, warm and relaxed. Stiles loses his breath at the picture of him, laying on his back with Derek giggling down at him. His cheeks warm up when he realizes Derek has been watching him staring at it longingly.

Stiles scratches at Derek’s stubble and then holds each side of Derek’s neck as he fixes one leg between both of Stiles’s, nudging them apart with his knee gently, and fully relaxes until they’re touching from head to toe. Stiles shivers in content as Derek’s nose digs into his neck and his beard scratches at the sensitive skin behind his nose. He trails his nose down Stiles’s navel, under the fabric of his shirt, and then back up.

“Stiles,” Derek tries to say past Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles blinks his eyes open and leans up on one elbow. He feels flushed and good all over, except where there’s sweat pooling in his navel. “Yeah?” Stiles asks.

Derek seems to sense his hesitation and smiles softly. “I do like how you smell.”

It takes a second for that to register because all Stiles can think of is Derek’s thumb rubbing at the skin over his hipbone, but then he smiles, all teeth, and says, “I _knew_ it,” before being silenced once again by Derek’s mouth and falling back down into the sheets with an _oomph_. “I changed your diapers, man,” Stiles says persistently, and Derek makes a disgusted face, trying to kiss him harder, and Stiles chases after that, adding, “you puked on me once,” and Derek flops down with a defeated sigh.

Stiles laughs, then laughs more, crazily, when Derek starts to tickle the flat of his stomach, and when Derek finally relents, he leans onto his side. “Why exactly did they change you, anyhow?”

Derek scowls, then, and Stiles presses gently at the hill of his eyebrows, just because he can. “I caught them on my property and told them it was private property,” Derek starts, and Stiles laughs again, obnoxiously loud. “I ended up getting into it with one of the younger boys, and one of them said something about me acting my age, then I was a baby.”

“Oh man,” Stiles wheezes. “You should _know_ by now that doesn’t work when you’re talking to punk kids.” Derek chuckles slightly, and Stiles's eyes go wide. “What?”

“Well,” Derek says loftily, stretching his arms over his head and crossing them. “It worked for you,” he adds, turning his head to the side.

Stiles grins, kisses him. “Hey, wait!” he starts, but Derek pulls him close and he finds a better use for his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Leaving comments is cool, so please do that? I love you and hope you liked it!
> 
> Also, check me out on tumblr, my URL is obriensnipples, and I only bite if you try to take my food!


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